I love Steve Martin, but I wish he'd stick an arrow through his head once in a while.AP FILE PHOTO

Abby is entering a corny joke phase.

I love it.

If my 6-year-old daughter is anything like me, she’ll come into her own around 8 years old. I remember I had a hand-held joke book I used to bring everywhere. I’d tell the same jokes over and over again. I wish I could remember them so I could torture my wife.

It was around the time Steve Martin was still a “wild and crazy guy,” long before he’d become a fretful parent and father of the bride. I wanted to be a comedian. In some ways, I never got over it. By age 10 I wanted to be a writer. Never got over that one, either.

Abby and I were walking to the bus stop one recent morning when she turned to me and asked:

She’s in first grade and I remember her dabbling with jokes in preschool. She knew something about them made people laugh, but she wasn’t quite sophisticated enough to fully comprehend why. She understood the structure of a joke, maybe from TV or from the other kids, so she tried this one on for size:

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Bear.”

“Bear who?”

“Barefoot!”

It makes no sense, but that was part of its charm. I liked it because of the promise it foretold. She had embraced the knock-knock joke, and some day in the not-too-distant future she would be able to wrap her little brain around why they work and how they work. That day is here at last.

The day after the bus stop trip I struggled to remember her jokes word for word. I asked her to repeat them when we were brushing our teeth. She added one:

“How much does a skeleton weigh?”

“I don’t know.”

“A skele-TON. … You tell one, Daddy.”

I am really out of practice. I had nothing. I had to reach back for one joke that actually made sense from the preschool era.

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Boo.”

“Boo who?”

“Don’t cry. It’s just a joke.”

“Good one, Daddy.”

Maybe I can go on the Internet and find a new incarnation of that old joke book. Maybe it could show up under the Christmas tree. Would my wife throw me out of the house? It’s worth the risk.

In closing, we have a long running joke on the Express-Times local desk, which comes just in time for the holiday season. I don’t know why it has stuck with me, but I can’t resist rolling it out from time to time.